Lecture 13: Global Project Management Flashcards
What’s special about Global SW Engineering?
- Distance
- Time Zones
- Culture
Communication in Large Teams
SW Engineering is communication-intensive [1]
“The more members that are added to a team, the more time is consumed in communication with other team members. This decrease in programmer productivity is called a diseconomy of scale in economic terms.”
GSE Increases Communication Overhead
Communication problems: [3]
- Who to contact
- Difficulty of initiating contact
- Ineffective communication
- Lack of informal communication
Miscommunication is a major reason for cost overruns, quality problems, project delays [4]
Influencing Factors
- Sites
- Geographic distribution
- Time zones
- cultural differences
- Target system
- functional requirements
- non-functional requirements
- sw architecture
- ogranization
- Process
- IT Infrastructure
- Goals and incentivs
- Employees
- Language and communication skills
- Technology and domain knowledge
- Experience with distributed projects
Dimensions of Organizational Models: How to Slice the Cube?
Axis:
- Subsystems
- Process
- Release
Separate by Subsystems
- Indications:
- Modular Product
- Clear and stable interfaces
- Pro:
- Subsystems can be modified consistently with minimal impact on other subsystems (low coupling, high cohesion)
- Sites can use different development processes, synchronization milestones sufficient
- Con:
- Integration may become problematic
- Central components, cross-cutting features and non-functional requirements difficult to implement
Separate by Process Steps
- Indications:
- Limited availability of technical resources, e.g. test equipment
- Specific expertise at a given site (requirements, design, code, test)
- Pro:
- Leverage time zones to speed up test and fix cycle
- Gain experience with GSE (Extended Workbench as first step)
- Con:
- High cross-site communication, e.g. problematic when fixing defects (problem detection and rework occur at different sites) • Inflexible to changing plans (availability of resources)
Separate by Releases
- Indications:
- Previous releases will remain stable (no new functionality, few bug fixes)
- Current release is much more critical to business than old releases
- Want to expose new site to product
- Pro:
- Current release still developed within one site
- N-1 site can learn about whole product
- Con:
- Cross-site communication required between maintainers and original developers - will slow down both
- Maintainers need to learn about the whole product at once
- High effort for synchronizing bug fixes
- Maintainers likely to feel disrespected
Hybrid: Gradual Subsystem Split
Combination of the above organizational models possible
- Release / Subsystem Hybrid:
- Move part of product, but not for current release
- In future, move subsystem responsibility for all releases
- Indications:
- Interim step to take over responsibility for part of the product
- New site is inexperienced with product
- Long term goal: subsystem responsibility
- Interim step to take over responsibility for part of the product
Conway’s Law [7]
Ogranizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communicaion structure of these organizations. –> A design effort should be organized according to the need of communication
Success Factors for GSE
- Communication
- Requirements
- Time Management
- Employees
- Culture & Language
- Architecture
- Organization
GSE Checklist
- Communication
- Open, regular communication
- Building trust through personal contact
- Effective use of communication media
- Organization
- One global team
- Clear processes and responsibilities
- Common goal
- Requirements
- Clear and precise requirements
- Common understanding
- Proactive clarification
- Architecture
- Optimized to reduce dependencies
- Low coupling
- High cohesion
- Time Management
- Proactive management of time difference
- Flexibility regarding work times
- Leveraging increased number of
office hours
- Culture & Language
- Culture awareness
- Respect for culture and values
- Consideration of linguistic differences
- Employees
- Selecting the right team members
- Preparing employees for their tasks
- Coaching and mentoring
Conclusion:
10 rules for successful GSE projects
- Plan the distribution deliberately
- Start locally and grow globally
- Carefully select employees and prepare them for their tasks
- Establish a common goal
- Further the exchange of employees
- Provide a suitable IT infrastructure
- Define clear communication structures and a global escalation path
- Utilize time zone differences
- Pay attention to clear requirements and domain knowledge
- Use an iterative process and foster continuous improvement
Which of the following are indications for the “Separate by Subsystems” pattern?
Select one or more:
a. Limited availability of technical resources
b. Modular product
c. Previous releases will remain stable
d. Clear and stable interfaces
b,d
According to Conway’s Law, organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are …
Select one or more:
a. Copies of organizational blueprints
b. Copies of the suppliers’ communication structures
c. Copies of the communication structures of these organizations
d. Copies of the design patterns applied
c
